Moving beyond Balanchine

The North Carolina Dance Theatre takes many of its cues from the past but finds inspiration in the present.

By MARINA BROWN

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2001

When the North Carolina Dance Theatre comes to the Mahaffey Theatre on Wednesday, dance fans will be swinging on one of the shooting stars of American regional dance.

Called by the New York Times "unstinting in range and thunder," NCDT features a full complement of mature dancers and a world-renowned director. But how did a company based in Charlotte, N.C., hardly a dance mecca, achieve such excellence?

It all started 20 years ago. A balletic "big bang" exploded with the death of New York City Ballet's artistic genius, George Balanchine. Despite dire predictions that dance would enter a creative ice age, many of ballet's brightest stars scattered across the country like an expanding galaxy.

Balanchine himself had suggested that dance after his death would change, should change. He didn't believe in forced duplications of his works, thinking that they would become emaciated parodies. He loved innovation.

And that's where dance fans in the provinces get in on the deal. Though they had lost their mentor, the dancers, choreographers and designers of America's golden age of dance were still sizzling with ambition, brilliance and ideas.

North Carolina Dance Theatre's program Wednesday represents the evolution of dance. The program will include two of Balanchine's works, as well as contemporary pieces from working choreographers.

"Balanchine loved surprises -- and me too," explained company director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux. "We must always seek to excite the dancers and the audience with something beautiful and new," said Bonnefoux, a star with both the Paris Opera Ballet and the New York City Ballet who spent 11 years as chairman of Indiana University's dance department.

Bonnefoux and his wife, Patricia McBride, for 30 years the epicenter of New York City Ballet's stable of ballerinas, choreograph, co-direct and train dancers for NCDT.

"Balanchine was very generous with his ballets," Bonnefoux said. "He never charged a penny for us to produce them." And yet, "I want my dancers to stretch themselves still further. They must be able to dance with pointe shoes, or character shoes, or no shoes."

He insisted there is no problem bringing top talent to a Charlotte-based company. "No more is New York the only venue for serious dancers wanting serious careers."

He believes that the quality of many so-called regional companies today surpasses that of New York's best. "Have no doubt, regional companies are superb." He said, "Now we have Eddie Villella with Miami City Ballet, Helgi Tomasson at San Francisco Ballet, Suzanne Farrell (Balanchine's quintessential muse) now teaching at Florida State University -- these people know what they are doing."

At the same time, Bonnefoux said, it's crucial to ensure that regional companies have fresh material, rather than falling back on old favorites.

"It is for this reason that I invite new choreographers with divergent styles and create myself new ballets," he said.

"For example, Alonzo King. He sets the company on fire." Bonnefoux said that King, an African American, is equally at home creating an African-based ballet set to traditional tribal chants or dealing with the abstract, but equally athletic, piece Map, which will be presented Wednesday night.

And then there's choreographer Paul Taylor. Taylor has breached his original "modem dance" boundaries to cross over into classical ballet companies around the world. "Everybody loves his Company B," said Bonnefoux of a piece on Wednesday's program. "It's set to World War II Andrews Sisters songs, with all the fun of jitterbugs and brilliant technique."

Bonnefoux, who this year is mounting a new production of Cinderella, acknowledged that there always will be a nostalgia for the old ballets, those with four acts and magical swans and glittering tiaras. He sees dance today as a continuum from classical ballet to abstract movement to ethnic and "world" dance.

"Dancers can move their bodies in many different ways -- like Wynton Marsalis going easily back and forth between Haydn and Armstrong. We don't have to say goodbye to any dance form, but welcome all."

Mahaffey executive director David Rowell, who has sharply increased dance programming at the theater this year, said he thinks audiences that once accepted only the classics are being changed by young people who want something new. "Dance is everywhere -- especially for the younger audience. MTV and the likes of 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys make movement a part of our culture.

"Movements that are fun and natural and easy to understand, and not thrust down from above, have great appeal."

Preview: North Carolina Dance Theatre, Wednesday at 8 p.m., Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg. Tickets are $27-$33. Call (727) 892-5767.

Master Class: Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, artistic director of the North Carolina Dance Theatre, will hold a free master class for intermediate/advanced dancers on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Cheryl Lee Studio of Dance, South Pasadena Shopping Center, 6800 Gulfport Boulevard in St. Petersburg. Limited to the first 35 registrants. Call (727) 345-6800.

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